Page 2 of Protected By the Convicts
She burst into tears again. Since the day she’d been told she’d belong to a unit on Narkos, Hannah knew she’d sleep with each man eventually, but not like that. Not as some sexed-up, horny, drug-addled nymphomaniac. Right now, she wanted to crawl under her covers and cry at the embarrassment and the lingering sense of being out of control.
“It doesn’t matter what you said or did. You were high. Ren wasn’t.”
Narkos had nearly two thousand men, many hardened criminals, and only four other females, each of whom was assigned to a unit. The prisoners here would do just about anything to take her, including offering money to her unit to loan her out, or outright trying to rape her. Max, her co-worker from the port, had trapped her on an empty railcar, but she’d escaped—barely. He was the reason one of her men always escorted her, why she wore a pendant around her neck filled with Sersie’s version of pepper spray.
Her hand went to her neck. Empty. Did she lose the black onyx pendant Ren had made for her “Where’s my necklace?”
“Sersie took it back to his lab. He wants to refine the compound.” Ky’Li pulled her closer into the warmth and protection of his body. She sank into his embrace, knowing she couldn’t stay there forever as she wanted. Hiding wouldn’t help anyone. Not her, not Ren.
“You won’t need the necklace while I’m here to protect you.”
“What was wrong with the chemical in there?” she asked.
“It didn’t permanently blind the last man you used it on. Unfortunately,” Ky’Li said with a definite note of anger in his voice.
“I used it on someone?”
“In the water treatment plant.”
More memories sprang forth. She’d been swinging a vase, naked and surrounded by nearly a dozen men. She hadn’t gotten away, she couldn’t have, not with so many men. Bile rose in her throat as her knees buckled.
Ky’Li caught her and turned her to face him. Gray eyes swirled with concern. “You weren’t touched. Vaughn and I. . . and Ren. . . reached you before the workers could touch you,” he said, his voice unwavering. She relaxed in his arms. She could trust Ky’Li. He wouldn’t lie to her, not about that.
“When you said I used the spray, I thought it was because someone got close enough to me to—”
“You sprayed Ren.”
“Ren?” A sudden fear shot through her. “Is he alright? Why did I use it on—”
“Because he’drapedyou, Hannah. He may have rescued you from the worker who chased you into the water treatment plant, but it doesn’t change that he’d raped you less than an hour earlier.”
As she tried to comprehend what Ky’Li had said, he led her across the house toward the bedrooms. “The middle room again?” he asked, his voice like a sheet of steel, impervious, revealing nothing of the man behind it. This was not the Ky’Li she knew, the man before the drug had changed everything for their unit.
Ky’Li pushed the door to the middle bedroom open. She’d been recovering in there with her choice of either bed. Alone. With none of her men to curl up to, to talk in the dark, to listen to their hopes and dreams as their hands explored her body and she explored theirs.
This. . . being alone. . . felt isolating, suffocating even.
“Breathe, Hannah,” Ky’Li said, his hand rubbing small circles on her back while she tried to calm long enough to catch her breath.
Ky’Li, her soldier, still slept in the master bedroom, while Vaughn bunked with Sersie in the third bedroom. Ren. . . Ren hadn’t come home to sleep. To eat. To see her. . . He hadn’t come home for any reason. He’d left. She needed to find him, talk to him, hear his side of what had happened. Soon, too. Once he escaped Narkos, she’d never have that opportunity.
Hannah sank into Ky’Li, seeking his warmth, his understanding, but mostly his strength. Despite all her confusion, she wasn’t ready to lose Ren.
“Which bed would you like, Hannah?”
She tilted her head back to take in his rugged face. The last time Ki’Li had stopped calling her sha’vi was when she’d slept with Vaughn. Ky’Li had been mad, hurt. Of the four men in her unit, only Ky’Li struggled with the idea of sharing her. He’d been raised on Daraan, not on Argus where family units consisted of several males for each woman.
“Your bed, Ky.Ourbed,” she answered. She’d been sleeping alone in that middle room while she healed, growing more isolated from her men every day. Ky’Li had stopped calling her sha-vi, Vaughn hadn’t been home much at all, though at least he returned at night to check her vitals, shower, and sleep, unlike Ren who she hadn’t seen since that first night she woke up, semi-aware of the men around her.
And Sersie. . . He’d fallen very quiet, too quiet. She had no clue what he was thinking. He’d created the drug that she’d inhaled, a drug that was never supposed to have left the lab. How it ended up at the port for export off Narkos remained a mystery. Sersie had his own addiction issues, and this entire incident had to be affecting him.
“You need to heal,” Ky’Li said with a furrowed brow. Her soldier remained adamant, though unsettled.
Hannah splayed her hand on Ky’Li’s chest. “I promise not to attack you in your sleep.”
“That’s not funny after what he did to you,” Ky said, as he held the bedroom door open for her.
“It wasn’t Ren’s fault,” she reaffirmed, hoping her trust in him wasn’t misplaced.
